


wishes bounce me weightless

by tnevmucric



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Arguing, Developing Relationship, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Religious Guilt, Slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-07-29 13:03:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16264763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tnevmucric/pseuds/tnevmucric
Summary: i'll pack my bagsi'm a sucker for your glowing





	wishes bounce me weightless

A band performs in 2007. The bar is called _Little Death_ and is no bigger than a studio apartment. The tiles are cold through our jeans. Our shoes squeak as we walk. We slide against bathroom stalls.

Even from here, I can hear the ocean rising: readying to chase me from forty minutes and a summer ago. My throat has a reflex prone to sand and sea salt and there aren't enough lights in the bathroom to brighten each wall.

The person I love smells like my mom. It's as close to home as I'll ever get.

I'm a firm believer in heaven and would rather not think about hell despite its alluring intimacy in Italian conspiracy. The forests of trees. The rocks tied to knees. The linear familiarity. It is the first week of the month and we're hugging on a bathroom floor while our song plays in the next room. It is grimy and disgusting and someone is throwing up in the corner but this moment is _grievous bodily harm. I have bullets in my arms._

I want to whisper, _I should have spoken with you earlier. I should have explained._

It's scariest by the road and it feels like 1992 and somebody is talking about a viper room (in four years once they've finally gotten over platoon). I feel like I've got bolders roped around my legs and he can't get out of bed. How deeply does the hurt have to go that you can't get out of bed? How deeply does it have to hurt to do nothing when you could be swallowing glass instead?

"You're my muse", I tell him in 2007, but it's like nothing's left when I do finally get to confess. He's still too tired to even sleep.

The uneasy concoction of detergent bubbles and General-Admission sweat has decayed inside both sets of our lungs (it remains in the audience and on the stage tonight). If the bed were the same, I'd lay somewhere to the left while making sure to throw my limbs in any and all directions. Now, my nose is buried in an arm I've had for too long and my skin is peeling from the new moisturiser I tried tonight. He smells like unwashed pyjamas and warmth; the nail on his middle finger on his right hand is chipped from cooking dinner last night.

His lips must taste like toothpicks.

Next to me, restless and with a growing pimple on his chin, he yawns. His hair is greasy and cut badly (by the beauticians horrible training scissors no doubt) and he has a bandage by his temple. It's taken me years too many to start sleeping with my feet over the covers and, now that I have, I still feel the claustrophobia of an ankle hooked around my own (and sometimes drool on my shoulder or a mouthful of someone elses bicep).

There is endless appeal in hiding anywhere I can near his flushed skin. Most days I can slide my hand over his stomach and bury my face in a shoulder-neck t-junction: tonight my fingers slide between his thighs in aspire to heal the frostbite there. I kiss the dip of his collarbone and he can't look at me.

"How's the bruise?"  
   
There is a cringe-worthy, audible crinkle of dried sleep around his eyes crumbling away. He blinks a few times as it fans off his lashes, and I wait to reply.

"It doesn't hurt", I say, pulling a hand up to tack the curled edge of his band-aid down, "Do I look like shit?"

"Mmhm", his eyes smile and trip over to the digital clock at my bedside table, "Is it really ten thirty?"

A few seconds are spent fumbling underneath the pillows before one of our phones is found: the lockscreen is a default black.

"One thirty, not ten", I reply, squinting. "I think your glasses are in the lounge."

The stars are completely shrouded in clouds outside and the rain doesn't seem too far off. The humidity is deathly. We've reached the stage of the night where replies are useless and high on whatever position the moon holds in the sky. "Be quiet", glasses-less says (but now he's grinning), "I want to sleep."

 

* * *

 

 

Instead of blaring, the alarm doesn't go off. The curtains are closed but light hovers beneath them and the spot beside me on the mattress is empty. The apartment is silent. I tilt my head to the door and feel my lungs stretch uncomfortably; when I reach my hand up to the ceiling, I get caught on the stretch of ink around my wrist.

"Josh?", I call out. He doesn't hesitate with an answer.

"Making coffee!" My senses flood back in. The window is open and the birds outside are still asleep. The shower steam from fifteen minutes ago is still hanging around and there's wet footprints on the carpet leading out into the hall (the sheets smell like shower gel and I feel a faint kiss on my forehead from at least an hour ago).

"You do look bad." Josh walks in holding two mugs and looking like something from the hand of God in a hoodie and shorts; his hair is messy and perched on his nose are his glasses. There's a bump on his temple the same shade as the bruise on my cheek. He sets one coffee down and hands the other over, sitting himself comfortably on the edge of the mattress and leaning back. "Feeling okay?"

"Are you?", I counter and Josh rolls his eyes but begins to pester my face with a mothering hand.

"Do you want ice? You look a little swollen."

The coffee tastes like an extra spoonful of sugar and Josh's lips because he'd probably tasted it to see if it was sweet enough to counter the inevitable mood of the morning. His hand is a gentle weight through the blankets.

"Come back to bed", I whisper. I don't want to break the atmosphere surrounding a very small pocket near my heart- this unwinding piece of red thread. "I'm cold."

Immediately I cannot stop the sinking feeling I get when Josh's eyes narrow at me: when his fingers tense. He still crawls back under the covers, though, and I'll pass off my noise of relief as the squeak of the mattress. And it hurts _to hurt to hurt to hurt_. I find comfortability in corner walls and cold linoleum floors: Josh has left me on read before.

My nails are kind of gritty and scratch against bricks in the ground. I can see how it could be unattractive. My body is in a state of decay and the smell reeks like Calvin Klein for some fucking reason. I pull on Josh's dark hair. It's still so wet and I remember he'd  forgotten to wash his skin for days. Maybe weeks. Maybe they can smell him rotting, too, and maybe he likes that. I want him to know that he needs to just shut up and close his mouth. He needs to just jump in front of one of the several trucks that pass him in the morning and needs to trip into one of the several trains that fly by after school days when he walks on the very edge. That way he'd realise that he couldn't just wake up in a bed with his mother crying on his lap.

He makes me want to swallow elastic bands until they replace the capillaries of my heart.

"In bed", I nudge myself into his arms, "you've always got your feet hooked over the mattress and an arm ready to fling me to the side."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Your fingers are always on my chest and I leave kisses on your palm."

 _My heart is in your hands,_ I don't say. _Once in a while, when I wake up, I find myself crying_.

I can tell it has rained by the way our sheets smell and the way my body is bare. I need to thank him for bringing the washing in. The fan is whirring over our heads because _it was your turn to switch it off last night_ and my phone is digging into my side. The warmth he gives off settles in my gut like pleasant lava: he is afraid of kissing me.

Salt water logs my pillow down and my head moves to his. He minds. He scoots closer. I kiss his jaw and he just breathes.

 _You deserve someone who thinks the sun rises on you (and I do. I_ do _)._

"I wanna talk", I tell him. His heart pauses.

"Okay", he says. "Let's talk."

I can anthropomorphise anything if it helps to not feel alone. Existence prolongs itself with each tick of the clock in my kitchen, who watches me with uneven, purple-sharpie eyes. Its pipe cleaner limbs extend to the masses and in this moment time has more control over me than it ever has. Time waits, and spins like coins waiting for the drop.

"It's different now", he must know, "We're different people. For me, it's like this... _lifeless light_ surrounds me every night. I don't think I could ever imagine that something so bright could also feel so fucking dark. And empty. It's like a glow that reminds me of this endless existence I've been sentenced to. I feel like God is gonna walk through the walls and creep up behind me; like he's gonna smack me over the head for thinking differently. Then he's going to yell _'I told you so'_ in my face. But I also know that it doesn't work that way."

"Poetic."

"Does it sound that good?"

 _Rotting_. It repeats in my head. _They all think we're rotting meat._

"You don't think I feel it too?", I spit it harshly into his chest, I want it to bleed through to his ribcage, "Do you think I'll _ever_ get over it, Josh?"

He doesn't reply at first, he rarely does. He needs time to process and time to differentiate which thoughts are his. He blinks tiredly, propping himself up on the pillow and squinting through the harshness of the morning. His grip has loosened on me but I'll keep holding. The sun looks nice on his skin and I keep talking.

"I think I won't. I think it'll always stay... like some kind of guilt. You feel it, too."

"Is that why you've been writing more?" His smile drizzles out painfully, like blood from a gushing wound.

"Maybe", _it's why I dragged you to the bathroom. I wanted to be inside of your skin. I wanted to find everything there was to find so I could just remember your taste. "_ I'm trying to rationalise it."

"It's fine for it to just... remain."

"Is it?"

"It is", Josh almost insists.

"But don't you want to escape?", I tangle our fingers. "Just _run away_ or something. I know I wouldn't survive but it's a nice thought, don't you think?"

"Not surviving?"

_"Getting away."_

"Maybe", he glances away, "but maybe you just want change and don't know how to go about it."

"Exactly."

"I-..."

He needs time to process. He needs time to think.

"She took a lot from you", I try to see him through his glasses. His eyebrow twitches.

"Did she?"

"Yeah." Reiteration has healing properties. "Tell me more."

He needs time to process. "What?"

"Tell me more about it."

"You're tired, Tyler. It's early"

_It is early and I always have time for you._

"Keep me up then, Josh."

He traces the lines of my palm and I can feel the calluses on his fingertips.

"Y'know that song _Horror Movie_?"

To him, the walls must be so tall and bright. You'd probably be able to taste salt in the air and it's probably so easy to hurt your knees with how smooth the ground is.

"Yeah."

"Yeah", Josh repeats. "That's what was playing on the radio. When I listen to it now, I can't remember anything but I know that something is there. It's fucking infuriating."

"Do you remember what the weather was like?"

"Muggy, but she had the air-conditioner on."

"Was the sun the same?"

"Nah", he squeezes my fingers briefly. "More orange. Streetlamp-y. Like... like a giant, fucking tangerine."

"Oh?"

"Yeah."

"Tell me more."

"I wouldn't call it r-", he cuts himself off, teething at the inside of his cheek. "It had that whole divorced parent's vibe. If _here_ is _here_ , then _there_ is _that_. Get me?"

"What's _here_?"

"Me and you. Lots and lots of nighttime. Sometimes I think we dont sleep."

"Sometimes we don't."

"You're right", our fingers tangle further, "God, I haven't fucking prayed in _months_ , Tyler. I want to say the band has made me forget but it hasn't." I press my cheek into his shoulder.

"This probably isn't the best place to start up again either."

"I usually try when you're asleep. I'm surprised you were even awake as I walked in."

"I've been worried about you."

"I know. I'm feeling okay right now."

"You know I love you, yeah?

"Yeah", Josh swallows and I can hear a rock fall to the bottom of his stomach, "I love you, too."

There is something irresistible about another presence in the room. Something that makes me want to breathe in every pillow and lie here until we are diminished to bones. The room- _our_ room- is the definition image of being unable to let go and being too caught up in moving on. At least the curtains are open. At least we remembered to water the plant. He swipes an eyelash from my cheek and I stare as his lips press into a smile.

"Thinking something nice? Or are you falling asleep?"

"Enjoying my time with you", I reply quietly. His eyebrow twitches, but he doesn't pull away.

There's something to be said about the thin stretchmarks that travel from his thigh to up behind the ugly yellow shirt hanging off of him. And there's something visionary in the stupid way he holds a pen, tucked behind his middle finger like he's constantly giving the peace sign as he writes. A fucking hairtie in his fringe bcause it always gets in the way when he drums.

"It's not a big deal", Josh suddenly rushes, "I appreciate the worrying but you've gotta know you can't drop everything for me. I'm only your friend."

"Who told you that?"

I watch him cringe. "I just want you to care about yourself before me."

"You don't get to dictate where I place my care, Josh, and you know I'm smarter than that."

"You _threw_ yourself into the crowd last night."

"I wanted to feel something. You did it too."

"To help your scrawny butt."

"I'm glad", I play with the ring in his lip and he flinches.

"How are you feeling, really?", he asks me, "That other stuff aside. You- ... I don't wanna sound like I'm-"

"It's too easy to be young and suicidal. I just wonder what I'm gonna do after that, s'all", I roll onto my back but keep my leg tucked over his. "I know faith bothers you. It bothers me, too. I'm losing it, I think. In everything. In myself. It's a hard thing but it could be good; _disambiguation_ or whatever. I still feel like slitting my throat but I can forget that. At least for now."

"Don't talk like that."

"Are you mad?", I ask, tilting my head towards him. "For some reason I don't think it's because I wanna die. I think you want me to just ignore the fact that _we_ fucked and _you_ liked it. Do you _want_ me to ignore it? Do you want to ignore the years we've spent together? The amount of _times_ we've told each other we _love_ each other? So you can _pretend?_ "

" _Yes_ ", Josh hisses, hands clenched tightly. "Yes. Is _that_ what you wanted to hear? I don't want to be the fucking _faggot_ everyone talks about. I wish I pushed you off of me before you- was that going to be your reason to kill yourself?!; I was so _truthfully_ mean one night that I finally pushed you over the edge? People'll say curiosity kills when I tell them what I told you- but I guess that's what you _fucking_ want."

"You're afraid."

"Of _course_ I'm fucking afraid", I feel his heart hammering in the room. His fists ache to punch the mattress, "you're scaring me. _This_ scares me. I feel like she's infested my head- every time I touch you I think of her fucking nails dragging me back to that car. Did you know she saw us? She saw me hug you, back when we were just friends, and she _spat_ on me. She told me she could turn me into a _real_ man- do you even _know_ how much I want to be with you?!"

"Josh-"

"No", his fingers dig into his pores, " _no._ I'm mad. Let me be mad. I know you just wanted to push and make us relate on some kind of level but, Tyler, you've _got to know_ that no matter what bullshit I say or how mad I get at you- or how many _times_ you go and do this- I _still_ fucking love you, and I'm gonna be here, but it's going to take me time to get _there_."

In the end, I know I will always regret. I will retch into the toilet with tears dribbling down my chin and the gagging will make my stomach clench so I will opt to laugh instead: it will bounce off of the porcelain. He will stay on the line, listening. And as my hands are covered in mucus, I'll cry harder. I'll yell louder. My cheek will flatten against the dirty tile beside my toilet and there will have always been knots in my hair from years of wear and tear.

I can never tell if the sound of my anguish is water on leaves or a broken T.V. The bed is colder than the ground and I believe it is because I'm an ugly crier that I feel like coughing up Belladonna leaves.

"Have you thought about going to that therapist?"

The bed has never felt so empty. He shrugs.

"A bit. What do you think?"

"You should do what you think is right." The coffee is too bitter, now.

"Yeah, I know", his hand hesitates by my arm but plants there, "but I value what you think."

"Then yeah."

"Thought so", his knuckles dig into my muscle, "I feel sick, sometimes. Like I _like_ feeling this way."

"You're kind of letting it define what you do. It's easier that way."

"Am I?"

"Yeah", I look up at him again and his previous anger has dissipated into tire. He shifts and tucks his head under his hand, keeping his knuckles barely pressed to me. "Don't keep all that shit internalised otherwise it'll consume your identity. That sort of thing."

"You think so?"

"Doesn't matter what I think."

"Your opinion matters to me."

"Thanks, but your opinion should matter more."

He's smiling. Open and a little twitchy.

"My voice of reason."

"I love you."

"Stay the night again."

"I was planning to, I kind of live here."

He cycles me in by the red strings in my chest, sharing his skin with mine and folding our fingers together- bracing some by my thigh. I examine his nails. His desk is a disarray of unopened letters, cologne, hairclips and sticky notes.

"I should paint these, don't you think? Blue would look cool."

"Sure."

I kiss his palm.

"Tired?"

"A bit", he kisses my fingertip fleetingly, "You look really nice today." I reach forward and comb through his fringe.

"The bags under your eyes are annoying."

"Thanks."

"Kidding", I kiss his forehead, "Tell me what you dream about when you wake up, I wanna know everything."

"Wake me up before midday."

"Love you."

My eyelids resist the clarity. I stare at my fingers on the texture of his shirt. The dry skin on his eyelids. His breath whispers by my ear and I feel his arms tighten around my body. Gentle is the word that comes to mind- not a weakness nor a prescription of kindness.

All I can think is that I'd rather be in his space than mine.

 _I want to love you for the rest of my life_ , I don't say. _I want to be with you until I die._


End file.
